Do you ever use the semicolon?

Experts believe that the semicolon (;) is in danger of becoming extinct from the English language because of its lack of use. Surveys showed that more than half of Britons never use it in their written sentences and just over 10% use it fairly often. Now the question one might ask is why more than half of Britons never use it. Well, the study further revealed that more than half of Britons don’t know how to use this punctuation. Maybe that’s why more than half of Britons never use it?

It’s alarming that more than 50% of the population do not know how to use the semicolon. What exactly are English teachers teaching in schools? Their job is to teach children all about punctuation. About where they go and how they are meant to be used in a written sentence. The semicolon is often very similar in appearance to the colon which is two vertical full stops; the semicolon, on the other hand, being a full stop with a comma beneath it. How they’re used is very distinct. The colon is always used as a prefix for items or points that are listed underneath it or after it. For example you might write a ‘to do’ list and you might say something like ‘TO DO: pay bills, ring maintenance, pick up the dry cleaning,’ etc. A semicolon, on the other hand, is almost like an in- between a comma and a full stop. What this means is that a comma is a short pause between items in a sentence and full stop is the end of a sentence. The semicolon is used to separate two components of a sentence that are related but not part of it. For example, you might say that ‘I moved to Spain to further my career; it didn’t work.’ But a comma and a full stop might be used as follows: To further my career I tried moving to Spain, Italy, France, etc. But now I realise that making these moves did not work.

I agree that it is hard to know when to use a comma, a full stop and a semicolon but with practice it can be learnt. People not knowing about simple punctuation reminds me of them also not knowing the difference between ‘you and me’ and ‘you and I’. In fact, I have to be honest and tell you that I think the phrase ‘you and me’ is also in danger of becoming obsolete. People are so afraid to use it, even when it should be used, that they always use’ you and I’ even when it blatantly sounds incorrect. Even pronunciations are incorrect. When you hear the word et cetera, I guarantee that it is being pronounced incorrectly. Listen for it the next time someone says it. If you hear a distinct x in the pronunciation then it is wrong; the ‘t’ comes before the ‘c’. The problem with all this is actually twofold. Text messaging has made people lazy. They’d rather use an emoji or abbreviations because it’s quicker. I understand how difficult text messaging was before the QWERTY keyboard came about. Thanks became ‘tnx’, thanks in advance became ‘tia’ be right back became ‘brb’ and let me know became ‘lmk’. These horrendous abbreviations are still being used even when the QWERTY keyboard is available; that’s how lazy people have begun.

The other problem is the blind teaching the blind. When I was at school I remember never being taught how to draw anything in perspective or how to shade. Our teacher would give us a subject to draw and then leave us to get on with it. There were no demonstrations or guidelines. He or she would just sit at their desks doing their own painting or drawing! The chances are that they were never taught to draw or paint and so did not know how to teach it to others. I think this is now becoming the case with teaching English to other people. How on earth do you teach the correct grammar, spelling, punctuation and pronunciation if you yourself were taught incorrectly? It’s a sad fact that the King’s English is now in the past.